When you spend part of the year in a small resort tucked away some distance from more celebrated Riviera destinations, you settle - or think you've settled - for a quiet life of little interest to the outside world.
Since returning from Abu Dhabi, however, I have encountered a series of events attracting more than passing attention.
In the same little corner of Le Lavandou last year, a Russian businessman with a habit of making enemies was shot dead by a hit man (not the first attempt on his life); and candles and flowers were left at a shop owned by one victim of the Air France crash in the Atlantic. This summer, we had our limited share of the deadly floods that ravaged the Var.
And yesterday, a call from London had me scurrying to the Font-Pré hospital in Toulon, where the (British) prime minister, David Cameron, was at the bedside of his dying father, Ian, who suffered a stroke while on holiday in the area.
There was not a great deal on which to report from the hospital. Most of my information, including the sad confirmation that Mr Cameron senior had died, came from London and the British embassy in Paris. But duty also required me to be at the Fort de Brégançon this morning in case Mr Cameron junior chose to make a public tribute; he did so, but in the form of a warm written statement, again issued in London, about his father ("an amazing man - a real life-enhancer".
So this apparently sleepy part of the coast has, in one way or the other, been rather newsy since my return from the Middle East.
There was, I discovered, a strange personal footnote to the death in the prime minister's family.
It turns out that his parents had been staying at Le Club, a plush hotel and spa just a few miles east of here at Cavalière.
It is a superb spot. The glorious views stretch from Cap Nègre, where Carla Bruni-Sarkozy's family have their Mediterranean home, towards the headland where sits Fort Brégançon, the presidential retreat favoured by past heads of state but not Nicolas Sarkozy.
It is also a spot my wife and I had chosen last week for a joint celebration of our birthdays, which occur only six days apart. It is rare for us to push the boat out quite so far - see my article about a visit to the island of Port-Cros for one unintended exception - but the menu, reproduced below, did not leave us feeling robbed despite the hefty bill.
When passing on the minor detail of Ian Cameron's holiday to a London newspaper, I mentioned my meal and also that I had seen no one while at Le Club answering to his description.
It seems that wives of reporters can sometimes be much more observant than reporters.
Mine put two and two together and, looking at a photograph of the prime minister's parents, instantly identified them as the refined couple who had dined on the table behind ours (out of my range of vision).
When the couple were ready to leave, Mrs Cameron had struggled to help her husband back into his wheelchair, prompting the maitre d' to dart swiftly to her aid.
We both agreed that for all the sadness of his death in a Toulon hospital yesterday, he had at least been in a beautiful, friendly and relaxing location for the last few days of an eventful life - a life he had made a great success, rising above the disability with which he was born.
"But what a pity," my wife added, "that he did not live to see his new granddaughter."
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